


The Blinding Light

by AriesOnMars



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hurt/Comfortverse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of incest, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 17:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14242371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/pseuds/AriesOnMars
Summary: The Daughter seeks to relieve the pain she caused to her dear Brother.





	The Blinding Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DuaeCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuaeCat/gifts).



“Brother?” she asked into the darkness. It was day, as much as it was ever day and night, and it was her brother’s habit to keep to shadows and dark places where the light wouldn’t blind him. His typical places to haunt were often in the palace where the windows were blocked out and the candle flames small and easily extinguished. Normally these places made her feel unwanted—not unloved, exactly, but their Father wasn’t as unbiased as he claimed and for centuries he had favored his Son above his Daughter.

 

In that neglect she had done something great and terrible, and now her Brother sulked in the shadows of the forest.

 

“I am here,” came his voice from somewhere she couldn’t see, but that wasn’t so great a feat. Her vision dimmed in the darkness faster than most. Only their Father could see in both the darkness and the light on their world. Even so she could still feel her Brother on the edges of her mind and she made her way under the trees to him. She had to touch along the trees, her fingers trailing on bark and over bushes even as there was an occasional break in the leaves above that let her see the forest around her. She found him tucked into the hollow of a tree when her hand slid over the rough bark and grazed over his fingers.

 

“You shouldn’t have hidden from me,” the Daughter sighed as she knelt down and brought her brother in close. He had been sitting, slumped into the opening of the half-rotted tree, and when she held him his head rested on her breast. He sighed against her, his breath cold even through the fabric of her robes, and slowly his arms wrapped around her waist to hold her. He was trembling in her grasp, his body shaking in seemingly random surges, and she knew he was in pain from what she had done.

 

“Do you hate me?” she murmured softly against him, her lips just barely brushing against his forehead.

 

“I could never hate you, Sister,” he replied, his voice strained from pain, and she held him a little tighter.

 

“Let me take you home, let me care for you,” she said as she started to stand and gently coax him up. He stood and he had to lean on her heavily, but he didn’t move with her.

 

“I don’t want our Father to see me like this.”

 

“You’re prideful,” she chided. “But if that’s what you want, then alright. Lead me through the forest like you used to.”

 

When they were very young their Father never slept. He would spend his days with his Daughter and his nights with his Son. It had never been his intention to separate them, they simply were not prone to being active together, and he let them rest as they needed it. As they grew the days and nights on Mortis changed. Dawn came, and with it dusk. A moon was formed over time and it would occasionally blot out the sun’s light or sometimes make the night shine brilliantly. They grew into their abilities and the Son could bring storms to darken the day, and the Daughter could rend the darkness with lightning. They grew and so did their Father, and after so very many years he finally slept. In those unobserved hours the Brother and Sister explored their world together. They found the forests long ago, and gave each one a name, but the one they were in now had always been their favorite. In it she had found life as a little creature broke out of an egg in a nest hidden in a tree’s roots—in it he had found death, although he had never shared with her how he came upon it and he only took her to the grave he dug when she pressed to know more. They had traveled in their forests together, because she had needed him to guide her through the darkest places and he had needed her to take him through the light.

 

He told her where to step and took her deeper into the woods until the darkness suddenly peeled away and she could see easily in the light of a clearing within the forest. She knew the place too, and with a blush she glanced away from it to look to her Brother instead. She hadn’t seen him yet, and in the light he was wincing. His lips were parted and he was panting. His white skin was ashen. His markings could have easily been blood.

 

“Do you need me to take you through this place and into the darkness again?” she asked. He shook his head and leaned on her heavily. Their strength was the same, even if she did not carry her power visibly as he did, and she held him easily. “I don’t want you blinded, Brother. I will set the sun.”

 

“You do not need to,” he sighed. “I am in pain, one more ache doesn’t matter.”

 

“It matters to me.”

 

She brought him to the clearing and eased him to sit. With him in the light she could see his pain, and with seeing came the urge to take the pain away. But, cruel fate, her abilities could not work on her dear Brother. She could heal most anything, bring it back to life, but if she used her talents now her Brother would only be in more pain. All she could do was remove his armor and lay him down, and despite his protest she raised her hand up to blot out the sun from her own eyes and urged the light to rest. It was harder than it used to be to do that, but she pushed and slowly the light obeyed. The balance on Mortis was wrong now, perhaps so wrong that if she hadn’t forced it to set the sun would have burned overhead forever. The darkness that came was weak, and the moon rose with it glowing as brilliantly as she had ever seen it. It seemed as though there was no purpose to the night at all, and she leaned over him so her hair fell and gave him a shadow from the bright moonlight.

 

“Rest, Brother,” she spoke gently. In the moonlight she could see him still, and she touched over his cheek gently. He turned his head into the touch and sighed against her palm. His eyes were open now, his body no longer trembling quite so badly once he was bathed in darkness. Their Father might wonder at the early sunset, but she would explain to him later.

 

“You have become so beautiful, Sister,” he spoke softly against her hand.

 

“Hush,” she whispered.

 

“You have always been beautiful, but looking at you now is almost too much,” her Brother continued and his eyes met hers. His eyes were focused now, although she had no doubts his vision was faltering in the twilight, whereas she was beginning to see better in the dim light than she ever had before. When they first began to understand their abilities their Father had told them he was sure that, one day, they would be able to see in the light and in the darkness as the other did, and as he did. She had doubted her Father then, but now she began to wonder if he was right.

 

“Then don’t look,” she spoke quietly. She moved a little, just enough to sit and bring her Brother close so he could rest his head on her lap. She stroked her fingertips along the edges of his markings, his cheekbones, along his jaw. It had been so long since she had touched him and she didn’t know where to start, or how to stop. He was sharp all over, nothing excess, nothing extra. Markings on his skin, designs on his armor, this was all he gave to decoration. He wasn’t like his Sister, who had curves he didn’t need, who braided and decorated her hair with beads and metals to glitter in the sun, who wore robes that flared at her wrists and billowed around her legs as she moved. She liked how she was, and at the same time she loved the way her Brother was too. He was everything she wasn’t, everything she didn’t need to be.

 

“What did you do?” he asked softly after a time. His Sister’s hand paused, then went back to stroking over his face to soothe him as best she could.

 

“You know what I did,” she answered softly. She wasn’t proud of what she had done, but she was also not ashamed. She hated to see the result of her work etched into the lines on her Brother’s face, but she wouldn’t have taken back what she set into motion.

 

“I know how it ended, not how it started,” her Brother said softly. He turned his head as she stroked over his cheek and kissed the palm of her hand. She could feel his chapped lips against her skin and she stroked her thumb over his rough lower lip.

 

“I showed my disciples the names and faces of yours,” she answered softly. “Every time one would meditate I would show them a face, tell them a name, and I let them know they served the Darkness.”

 

“That’s all?”

 

“That’s all. I know living beings as you do, I knew what they would do. Yours would have reacted in fear, but mine attacked out of purpose. They wanted to save their worlds from you,” she stroked over his head as she spoke, and she shifted just a little to cradle his head closer in her lap. “Do you hate me?”

 

“You asked me that before,” he smiled just a little. “I could never hate you. I’m not glad to see them gone, and I am not glad to be in pain, but if I must be I’m glad you are the one who hurt me.”

 

“You hurt me first,” she said softly. “You’ve been leaving me behind. You’re prideful, Brother, more than you know. Our Father has favored you for so long, and your Sith were only becoming stronger. Your nights have been getting longer and longer, your darkness deeper and deeper. I love you so much, but you were going to forget me. Both of you were.”

 

“I would never have forgotten you,” he started to rise, but she put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down to lay in her lap.

 

“You would have, but it doesn’t matter now. Your temples are in ruins and Malachor is dying. There are only a handful of your disciples now scattered across the galaxy and scared,” she cupped her hand against his cheek as she spoke. She wasn’t proud of what she had done but she did what she needed to do. Her Brother raised a shaky hand and held it against hers.

 

“Will you stay with me?” he asked against her skin. “I have not loved you as I should have, but I need you now.”

 

“Of course I will stay with you,” she felt a relief she hadn’t expected wash over her and she gently eased her brother off of her lap so she could lay beside him. She leaned in to press her forehead to his, and his arms circled her again, but his grip was weak and trembling.

 

What a perfect place this clearing was for her Brother to remember his love for her. She had brought him to this meadow so long ago, and she could still see him as he was then. Blinded in the sun, all in black that did not suit the flowers that surrounded them, he had been her equal. She had brought him close and kissed him then, first as his Sister and then as his Lover. It had been the first time they had known one another so intimately.


End file.
